Halt anti-capitalist conservatism.

The wanderings of “conservatism” can take you all over the ideological map, so it is best not to get too deep into any one of the lost trails along that side of the political spectrum. An especially dodgy side trip is the one that leads to the following Google definition of conservatism as “the holding of political views that favour free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.”

Looks like Google’s lexicographers need a lesson or two in the latest trend in conservatism. In the full heat of the COVID-19 lockdown, an apparently broad anti-free-enterprise movement is gaining traction within conservative circles. Scrap free enterprise from the definition.

The truth, of course, is that free markets have never been at the heart of mainstream American or Canadian conservatism. The writer of a new book on the American version describes one of the qualities of conservatism as “respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on human values.”

Not exactly a glowing endorsement of free enterprise, which is no surprise given modern conservatism’s general reluctance to accept capitalism as a primary foundation for its existence. There is a branch, sometimes known as “liberal conservatism,” that is said to adhere to rigid free market principles, although as Wikipedia notes liberal conservatism is not to be confused with conservative liberalism or libertarian conservatism.

Sorry about the diversion from the tantalizing headline, but it seems important to set up the fact that conservatism is a burbling mishmash of economic perspectives that may or may not embrace free market capitalism. Today, in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, belief in free enterprise — including free trade and competition — seems to be sliding even further down the definitional ladder.

In the United States, anti-market ideas are in the air, generated by President Donald Trump and others in his camp: Globalization brings trouble, national at- home production of products and services is vital, freedom of trade needs to be reined in.

Other Americans are clamouring for some form of “industrial policy” to be imposed by Washington. Many are liberals and Democrats, such as Elizabeth Warren, but just as many are conservative republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio, who — concerned about China — warns of “the perils of free market fundamentalism.” A bevy of U.S. political consultants with an anti-market bent are also on the planning bandwagon.

In Canada, the torch for state industrial strategizing is being carried by Sean Speer, a Conservative party consultant, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and a National Post columnist. In a new commentary co-written with Sam Duncan, also a Conservative consultant and former policy director to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, the two Tory back-roomers call for major industrial policy intervention as the foundation for future Conservative economic policy.

In their commentary, published last week on the conservative e-magazine, C2C Journal, Speer and Duncan claim the government-led lockdown of the economy creates the need for a government- led strategy to regenerate growth: “The Conservative party should commit itself to an industrial policy framework as part of a renewed program of economic growth and opportunity.” The pandemic, they add, “has only reinforced and accelerated this trend in conservative policy thinking.”

Speer has covered this ground in the past at the liberal Public Policy Forum, but at C2C he brings it directly to Big C Conservatives who are currently struggling to find a leader — and a policy direction. Of all the policy options open to the Conservative Party of Canada, an industrial strategy is surely one to avoid.

The call for direct government intervention via industrial planning is based on the idea that belief in free markets, free trade and enterprise capitalism is soooo 1970s, sooo far from the realities of today, sooo tied to the fading ideas of the great 20th-century free market economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

Two “realities” are highlighted as the justification for more and bigger government. The rise of China and something called “intangible capital.”

Speer’s view is that China’s success is due to state intervention, therefore Canada should adopt China-like policies. Never mind that China rose out of full-scale Communist lockdown to economic expansion by adopting more market-oriented economic policies.

The other item on the Speer-duncan motivation list is the alleged rise of “intangible” assets — intellectual property and other non-capital assets — as the driver of corporate expansion which came at the expense of growth. The result of the rise of Google and Facebook and other corporations that have few hard assets but lots of IT capacity has supposedly been economic stagnation and growing inequality.

The main source of these ideas is Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy, a 2018 book by economists Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake. They claim that the rise of intangible capital has undermined the free market system and generated myriad problems, including the massive social and economic inequality described by French Marxist Thomas Piketty, whom Haskel and Westlake greatly admire for having exposed the rot at the heart of market capitalism.

So that’s where Canada’s conservatives are being asked to go. Forget free markets, globalized trade and the maintenance of limited government, say Speer and Duncan. These ideas “do not fully apply to the twin forces of intangible capital and the rise of China.”

In advocating for Canada’s Conservatives to adopt industrial planning as a model, Speer and Duncan add that “It would be wrong … to throw Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman out with the bathwater.”

It would indeed be wrong. But they do.